As a budding economist, I was initially awed by the market mechanism: the invisible hand that encourages innovation and leads companies to efficiency levels that grow our nation’s wealth.  Observing underlying economic principles at work never ceased to amaze me as a college or graduate student. My learning journey in economics was not unlike that [...]

I feel overwhelmed by the volume of digital messages coming at me from all corners of my life. And I am not alone. My 2013 prediction is that value is about to rapidly migrate once again in technology markets. Over the holidays I met a young woman in her 30s — a former boutique owner [...]

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the volume of information, options and messages bombarding your daily life, you are not alone. Enter the curator – a role that I believe will become even more dominant in the decades ahead, creating opportunities for individuals and companies alike. The term curator has traditionally been associated with the [...]

I used to love Meet the Press, the Sunday morning TV show where I’d gain new insights into a pressing public issue. Today the show feels more like a platform for propaganda from different sides of the political debate. For example, when guest Rachael Maddow tried to dig into the “fundamental disagreement about the facts” [...]

The market share battlefield and its weaponry changed considerably as our economy transitioned from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. In particular, the growing sophistication of marketers (and IT needed to support them) has been nothing short of breathtaking. The movement from the Industrial Age to the Information Age increased customer power, expanded offerings [...]

“Today everything computes. Intelligence has been infused into things no one would recognize as computers: appliances, cars, roadways, clothes, even rivers and cornfields.” So begins an IBM Smarter Planet ad in the Wall Street Journal arguing that computing must get smarter to manage today’s wealth of data. This data is not your father’s data of [...]

Imagine being a 4h grade teacher with a class of 25 students with widely different levels of math aptitude and competency. How do you challenge the most adept students? How do you help the laggards without boring the stars to tears? The only practical option seems to be to teach to the middle. That it, [...]

While bets are being placed on whether the Green Bay Packers will beat the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Super Bowl ring, I’m placing my bet on a dramatic transformation of retail chains’ business models over the next decade.  The football outcome can’t be predicted – both teams are awesome, and we can’t predict players’ energy [...]

I watched Food, Inc. over the holiday weekend, a documentary about US food companies whose products fill grocery store shelves and bins and supply our numerous restaurant chains. I’m a pragmatic independent, so I’m able to see through the one-sided nature of the filmmaker’s criticisms of food companies. But there’s significant merit in the film [...]

I love when trends come together, prompting innovations that make the world a better place. Frankly, this observation helps me recover my optimism after the news of the day invokes discouragement. Three trends – crowd sourcing, greater entrepreneurship within academic scientific communities and scarcity of natural resources – have come together to create asknature.org. The [...]